While the Occupy movement railed against the excesses of the 1% and it has become normal to diss those who work on Wall Street, why is it that Warren Buffet is often seen as the successor to Walter Cronkite as the Most Trusted Man in America?
Well for Warren, life isn’t about money. He still lives in the same house he bought in 1958 for $31,000. He wears off the shelf white shirts with rumpled collars and he would much rather sit down to dinner with a cheeseburger and a Cherry Coke than go to a fancy restaurant.
The key to the trust that the world puts in him is several fold:
He is respected for his success
His modest spending habits come across as avoiding selfishness.
He accepts responsibility for his actions and results, whether good or bad.
Above all, I think the key is that he isn’t greedy. He isn’t out for himself and that separates him from so many other leaders who seem to be out for themselves first.
Trying to start this business has been a real journey of discovery for me. I now look back in amazement at what I didn’t know about leadership and wonder after spending almost two years studying the subject, what I still don’t know.
Case in point, influence. I’m reading a book on the subject called “Influence; The Psychology of Persuasion.” One of my blog followers recommended it. The following video is a short summary of the subject that is worth a watch.
Can you remeber a time when you were highly productive and gained enourmous satisfaction from work, when you had seemingly limitless amounts of energy? Well if you’ve ever been there, what you were experiencing is called flow.
Mihàly Csìkszentmihàlyi, the psychologist studied thousands of people, and observed that people who were working at their full potential were experiencing what he called “flow”.
So how do you generate that feeling in others? How do you create a work environment that enables people to work at their full potential.
McKinsey suggests a few ways in this article . The article pinpoints the conditions that made this level of performance possible:
The first thing is role clarity: People know know what is expected of them and the resources needed to get the job done.
The second factor is the quality of interactions: Trust, respect, creative conflict, a sense of humour and teamwork.
Finally there is vision: People get in the flow when there are high stakes, a challenge, and doing something that matters, will make a difference.
I keep running into the same set of factors when looking at what creates magic in the workplace. So what are you doing to create flow in those with whom you work?
There’s lots of literature on the diffusion of innovation (nerd-speak for how innovation spreads) but most of it is devoted to how to get customers to innovate.
Never mind customers, how do you get your bosses or co-workers to innovate, or even your own direct reports, when they are reluctant to do so?
There is quite a lot on the net that would suggest that this is possible and many blogs will tell you how, but domestication of an ass to turn him into a donkey is not that easy.
The problem is that culture can cause inertia and if the culture isn’t supportive of innovation then you had better forget trying to get your boss to be innovative. Instead of wasting time and being frustrated, move on and find somewhere that values innovation.
There’s a great interview of Seth Godin on Copyblogger. Worth a read, I’m still laughing from reading it.
The best line was when Seth was asked whether he writes every day. His response: “Do you talk every day?”
As all of you know, I’m trying out this writing thing (having read prodigiously all my life) and am really enjoying it. I write fast and as you know, not well, but I’m learning and hopefully I’ll figure it out some day.
Meanwhile, I have been writing like a madman for 18 months now and frequently end up sending somebody something that they just don’t read. I mean they don’t even get far enough to get turned off by my turgid and dense prose.
I’ve run into this problem before and used to be dismayed by the fact that many people don’t seem to like reading. Seth’s pairing of reading with talking made me realize that I shouldn’t be so upset. Lots of people don’t like listening either.
So Blackberry finally released their new phone this week. I happen to use a Blackberry but only because I like the buttons. I have tried typing emails on touch screen based smart phones but my inaccurately big fingers seem to mess everything up so I am relegated to an older ‘not-so-bright’ phone.
The new Blackberry made me look at what they released and question what type of innovation this represents. Experts (of which I am not) typically classify innovation as one of the following types:
Sustaining innovations are small enhancements that companies need to issue just to stay in the game.
Breakout innovations significantly up the level of play within an existing category.
Disruptive innovations are what we usually think of when we think innovation. These disrupt the current market behaviour by making existing solutions obsolete or transforming value propositions.
RIM’s original Blackberry was a disruptive innovation. No question of that. Apple’s iPhone is probably best seen as a breakout innovation. It upped the level of play but it didn’t establish an entirely new category. (I’m sure you could debate this but if you look closely at how Apple innovates, it typically develops Breakout Innovations like the Mac and the iPod but once in a while disrupts the market with something like an iPad.) Android based phones were probably a Breakout innovation, certainly not Disruptive but in some ways they could be classed as Sustaining as their appeal might be primarily based on price.
The new Blackberry I think is merely a Sustaining innovation. I don’t think it offers anything that is materially new and the key word here is Materially. Easier application switching, blink-less photos, faster loading times? Big Whoop.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the market.
February is here, summer can’t be far behind. Have a good weekend.
While the Occupy movement railed against the excesses of the 1% and it has become normal to diss those who work on Wall Street, why is it that Warren Buffet is often seen as the successor to Walter Cronkite as the Most Trusted Man in America?
